


Only Now Can We Remember

by misszeldasayre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Exes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22832398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misszeldasayre/pseuds/misszeldasayre
Summary: Ben Solo arrives home, disgraced. All of Hanna City judges him—all but Rey.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 56
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	Only Now Can We Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [america_oreosandkitkats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/america_oreosandkitkats/gifts).



_So the feeling comes afterward_   
_some of it may reach us only_   
_long afterward when the moment_   
_itself is beyond reckoning_   
_beyond time beyond memory_   
_as though it were not moving in_   
_heaven._   
_—W.S. Merwin, “The Comet Museum”_

* * *

Hanna City. The Silver Sea. It chafes against Ben like an ill-fitting mask. Though he may have declared years before that he was done with Chandrila, he can’t seem to pierce a hole wide enough to escape for good through the fog smothering the whole kriffing place.

Coming home tastes like flat Daruvvian champagne left out for weeks after a celebration. It tastes like saltwater and singed metal and white hot shame.

Coming home means receiving dark stares at the marketplace, subdued greetings from the cashier who attended the same high school as Ben but now pretends to have forgotten his name. As if anyone in this town could forget it.

Ben Solo, son of Senator Organa, Hanna High valedictorian. The youngest associate professor at Coruscant University, the lead researcher on the First Order project. The youngest associate professor to get hired and fired.

He hears that Endor is nice this time of year, that Hoth is a bit chilly but tolerable with a thick taun-taun skin coat. He imagines running to the jungles or frozen plains to escape the prying eyes. Even the twin suns of Tatooine might squeeze less sweat from his pores than the scrutiny at home. The promise of anonymity in exchange for the scratch of sand seems almost worth it when his mother’s friend Amilyn corners him at the library and inquires about the progress of his research. As if she doesn’t know. But Ben was raised on softness: the curve of waves, the brush of the moon through clouds, the silk sheets befitting a Skywalker. He couldn’t bear the harshness of the desert anymore than he can escape the whispers. So he stays.

Their words are kind, their murmurs sympathetic, but Ben only sees the darkness rimming their teeth. They know why he has returned. They know, and they fear. Their fear only fuels his anger.

He goes to the ocean when he’s mad. He’s mad a lot. The tide he learns by heart. It stamps water lines on the legs of his pants dunked in the receding surf, spaced like tree rings. At high tide, he keeps to the tree-line separating the sand and the city. At low tide, he walks out far along the sandbar until the waves numb his feet, then his ankles, then his calves.

On a walk along the Silver Sea one evening, not long after his unexpected return to Chandrila, Ben stumbles upon an abandoned sand castle. Turrets, packed tight and topped with seashells, rise above a moat once filled with water but long dried up. Sand crabs skitter at its base, but the castle remains remarkably intact. How this castle manages to stay upright, unbroken, while Ben finds himself battered by the winds and waves of Coruscant, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that it feels wrong, so he kicks and yells until the wind chafes his throat. The castle crumbles under his feet, but does little to ease his frustration.

The morning after the sand castle crumbles, she calls. Ben’s hands tremble so furiously he barely can answer the phone. When she invites him to meet up at The Castle for coffee, he’s not sure whether he’s been fearing or hoping for this invitation. After the way things ended between them three years prior, he hesitates to resurrect that agony. Let their past relationship die and with it, any semblance of a future together. It’s the only way to keep his head above water. But when has he ever been able to stay away from Rey?

So he shows up on Takodana Street on the appointed afternoon, equal parts dreading and yearning for her company. With Rey, he has come to learn, there are never halves. She deals in wholes, decisive and determined, forged under a desert sun. Ben, on the other hand, finds his resolve always torn asunder when he’s pulled into her orbit. The constant sensation of splitting apart and reforming anew thrilled him at first, but wore him down as graduation approached. He left Hanna City and her halving of his whole as soon as diplomas were meted and tassels were turned.

When she steps out of her battered junker with the same brown pack strapped to her back, he remembers what it’s like to divide again under her gaze. In the time it takes her to cross the parking lot and join him at the cafe’s door, Ben forgets what his hands are for. They fumble at his collar, traveling the nape of his neck before settling in his pockets, only to emerge again. Then she’s standing before him for the first time in years and Ben’s not entirely sure how to respond.

They exchange tentative smiles. A seagull chirps in the distance. The door to The Castle jingles open and a handful of tourists in flip-flops storm out to the beach. Ben has envisioned this meeting hundreds of times, yet he’s forgotten what to say. When Rey breaks the silence, he blesses the same boldness that wedged itself between them.

“Are you taller somehow, too?” she quips, and here she goes again, prompting that familiar sensation of dividing and mending deep within Ben’s gut.

“You might have gotten shorter,” he concedes, earning a snort.

She throws her arms around him, wrapping him in a hug that smells faintly of grease and pine and something he forgot too long ago to miss.

“You’re home,” she beams, and despite everything that’s passed between them, Ben knows her smile is genuine. It lights up the afternoon—kriff, it could power the whole city. Not that he has any right to notice after everything. So he settles for a small twitch of his lips in return. It does little to dim the brightness radiating from her face.

“So are you.” That does it—her grin smears in the rain of her frown. Thirty standard seconds, and Ben ruins it again. What a stupid thing to say to the girl who longs to leave town, but can’t pay her way out.

He fumbles for a recovery. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here. With me.” At the admission, Rey’s storm disappears. He waits on her, unsure of how to proceed without turning the whole interaction into bantha fodder. Mercifully she takes the lead, tugging open the shop door and directing them towards the counter.

Rey has probably heard from a dozen different sources about why Ben Solo returned home three weeks before his fourth semester teaching at Coruscant should end. As they wait in line, Ben swears he feels her conscience reaching out for his, not searching for the wound, but taking stock of his humiliation and feeding back only warmth. Somehow she knows there’s more than the rumors, but also knows it’s not the time to push.

They order, Rey first. A regular, she has her order down pat. The barista, a slender blond woman with hair twisted up into two buns atop her head, chirps another installment in a years’ long conversation with Rey. Unfamiliar envy sits heavy on Ben’s tongue; he finds himself jealous of the barista, of the few minutes of Rey’s company that she gets each day, minutes that add up to hours and weeks and months that Ben spends missing Rey.

He can’t take his eyes off of his companion’s hair when she bends to pay. For so long she twisted it back in a neat row of three buns. Now she wears it unbound save for a small half ponytail sweeping the strands from her eyes. It’s longer now, bleached at the tips by the sun. Fighting the urge to card his fingers through her hair, Ben grips his wallet with more force than necessary. His credit card threatens to crack in hand.

They find a table at a window overlooking a garden at the back. The chair that Ben selects wobbles on uneven legs, but he settles for bracing himself against the table. She brings extra napkins, like she used to do for every meal they shared. Always using up more than her fair share, but remembering him, too.

“It’s been so long,” she begins, fingers knitted around her cardboard cup.

“Really?” he snorts, can’t help himself. “It’s been three years of silence and that’s what you lead with?” An unexpected sharpness emerges between the words; a nearby patron glances up from her datapad at their table.

Over the rim of her cup, Rey’s narrowed eyes shoot lasers. She grumbles something like, “Hasn’t been long enough,” but then she washes the glare away with a sip of caf and Ben’s eager to smooth things over with a change of subject.

“How’s business at Plutt’s?”

Her sigh speaks volumes. “Busy.”

“Ah,” he stalls. Only ten minutes together, and already unsure of how to continue the conversation. “I see.”

“How’s moving back home?”

A thousand words spring to mind, yet Ben hesitates before settling for honesty. “Hard.”

True to form, Rey doesn’t flinch. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Again with the unintentional prickliness. Ben hates himself even as the words form on his tongue.

She studies him, long and slow before blinking. “Let’s not do this.” Faint exhaustion borders each word. They’ve been here before; time has done little to prevent their slide back into old patterns. “I need this afternoon to be...”

Tolerable. Perfect. “Safe.”

“Yes.”

He nods, feeling her signature prickling against his mind, strange and electric. He wonders if she feels him reaching out, too. By the softening of her jaw, he fancies she can.

“I missed you,” she says quietly. Over the whirr of espresso machines and customer chatter, he almost misses it.

“You did?” The admission warms him, caf hitting an empty stomach. A smile kisses her eyes, further confirmation of the truth. “You did. I did, too.”

What he wouldn’t do to preserve her smile, to trap himself in its beam.

“I thought you’d be too busy to remember much.”

“I remember everything.” Drawing a blush from Rey is no easy feat. Working in the junkyard, she regularly encounters the sort of conversations that quickly dull such a reaction, which is why Ben takes pleasure in the pink spreading across her cheeks. Then she leans in across the table, mouth drawn and eyes flickering between his.

“But you’re not glad to be back.” She’s too sharp for Plutt’s junkyard, for Hanna City, for the whole damn galaxy.

“No,” he admits. 

“Look, Ben, I’m so—”

Cutting her off with a wave of his hand, he blurts, “You don’t have to say it.”

“But I am sorry that the research program was shut down,” she says. “I’m sorry you lost your job at the university. I know how much your research meant to you.”

He forgets to brace himself against the table, falling prey to the wobbly chair.

“I gave it everything I had. I didn’t hesitate. But I failed. I failed and it’s my fault. Now it’s over.” Bitterness clouds his tone, sounding petulant even to him. Would that he could spit out a sentence without first dunking it in a syrup of self-pity. It’s a miracle Rey invited him here, an even bigger miracle that she hasn’t left. Their coffee now cold, his lips licked dry—there’s nothing left to say.

A long forgotten possessiveness demands he prolong their time together. Anything for another minute of Rey’s time. So he suggests they adjourn to the beach, only a few steps from the cafe. The eagerness with which she slings her pack from the table to her shoulder surprises Ben. Maybe she’s not ready to leave, either.

Under the waning winter sun, they walk a hundred standard meters from The Castle to the Silver Sea State Park, three miles of coastline stretching before them. Ben tears off his shoes as soon as they reach sand. Rey follows, tucking their shoes into her pack.

She sighs at her first step onto the sand. “It’s been longer than I’ll admit.”

Maybe he’s not the only one who has changed since they last spoke. “You live so close,” he probes.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Plutt still working you hard?”

“Dawn till dusk, if he had it his way.” Exhaustion lines her voice, an audible manifestation of the dark bags circling her eyes.

“Kriff, Rey,” he mutters, “you need to get out of here.”

“So did you.”

He hates the way his pulse flutters at that: no condemnation in her tone, no questions, just a matter-of-fact reminder that they’re both too big for Chandrila. Rey leads them to the damp sand at the water’s edge that slurps at their feet. They meander along the liminal space between water and shore, bubbles forming and bursting under every footstep. The sand flushes pink with the sunset, mirroring the tips of Ben’s ears when Rey touches his forearm to point out a porpoise breaching in the distance.

A sand dune runs perpendicular to the ocean, casting shadows over the beach as the fading sun washes the clouds purple. Joggers and dog owners pepper the beach, soaking up the last few minutes of light. Rey giggles at the nearest puppy who chases a ball across her path. Caught in her spell, the orange-spotted puppy forgets its pursuit and barks in greeting, jumping up to rest both paws on her shoulders. Although it barely reaches Ben’s chest, it dwarfs Rey. When its tongue swipes across her cheeks, Ben stiffens, but Rey just giggles.

A few paces away, the dog’s owner whistles. “BB-8!” One final lick at Rey’s face, and the orange-spotted dog bounds back to his owner, panting all the while. She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand, eyes squinched shut. He knows she wants a chuckle. He gives it to her gladly.

She leads him up the sand dune. Its steep, loosely-packed slope makes for slow going, made even slower for Ben who matches his strides with Rey’s. Letting go of her hand might speed up his journey, but he’d never consider it a real option. In this moment, their fingers intertwined, he’s not alone.

Too soon they crest the top of the dune, toes caked with sand and palms sweaty from the climb. To their left, the sea sprawls; to their right, the pine forest. A familiar sight. Years ago they climbed this dune together every summer, laid out blankets on the spots where their feet now rest, snuggled up and watched the moon tease the waves. Gone is their ravenous hunger, but their easy camaraderie remains—a bit dusty from disuse, but intact.

She rifles through her pack, unfurling an old plaid blanket, stained with the remnants of previous adventures. Ben knows the blue and red checks by heart; three summers ago he traced the pattern with his fingers until he worked up enough courage to lean over and kiss Rey. (She didn’t respond at first; in those seconds that housed a thousand eternities, Ben wished he could melt through the blanket, dissolve into a hundred grains of sand, and scatter from her sight. Then she leaned in and all was right in the world.)

With one practiced flick of Rey’s wrist, the blanket spreads flat over the dune’s peak. She plops crosslegged onto it, weighs down one edge with her pack, and looks up expectantly. Reverently Ben joins her, legs spilling from the blanket to the sand. “You still have it,” he murmurs. His fingers find the red threads, then the blue. The blanket feels thinner under his touch, a bit more threadbare than he recalls, but it’s still the same. The constancy grounds him even as the world keeps spinning without him.

“It’s older than when you last saw it,” she warns, and Ben wonders if she’s just talking about the blanket. “Some of the stains don’t wash out too well.”

“It’s perfect,” he says a touch too fervently.

“It’ll do.” They survey the coast, the frequency of the waves, the dogs, one handful of children chittering as they try to outrun the tide. Talking with Rey excites him; sitting by her side without scrambling for something to say heals the cracks that Coruscant University has wedged in his soul. Reluctant to break the peace settling over their blanket, he fights to stay still, keeps his eyes locked on the horizon as the sun dips out of sight.

The last few beachgoers slip away, replaced by constellations stitched into the night sky. A thick moon rises to illuminate the footprints pressed into the sand and the tide sneaking in to wash them clean. A faint breeze picks up, just enough to prompt Rey to burrow deeper into her jacket.

“When I heard you were coming home, I wrote it off as a rumor,” she whispers, even though their only eavesdroppers are the stars and sand crabs. Ben has to bend forward to properly hear her over the incoming tide; her lips brush the shell of his ear. He forces himself to feel the sand underfoot, the wool blanket between his fingers, anything to distract him from memories involving her mouth and his ear.

“I wondered how you would react,” he replies, leaning in farther than he strictly needs to. “The monster comes home, disgraced.”

“I cried,” she admits, eyes following the division between water and sky. Over the blanket Ben’s hands still, waiting for more. “I didn’t believe it at first. Chalked it up to jealousy. It’s not every day that a boy from Hanna City gets to…” Her voice trails away when she glances up from the sea and catches sight of his pinched mouth.

“Not here,” he pleads.

A nod of agreement. “Not here.”

“It’s over. Done.” The thought chills him to the core, cutting deeper than the breeze. “There’s nothing more to say.”

One lone seagull cries.

“You’re hurting,” she ventures.

Concealing parts of himself from Rey has always been a futile venture; she lights him up from the outside in and reads everything carved into his bones. So he says what he thinks, without hesitation—she probably already knows. “It hurts less with you.”

“I cried because I knew you’d be devastated” —her voice is sandpaper, smoothing the roughness from the confession until it gleams transparent in the starlight— “and I cried because I had dreamed of you returning.”

“You never told me you were lonely.”

“You were gone, you weren’t coming back. I didn’t know how.”

The truth stings like seawater washing over open wounds. All Ben can do is let out a bitter laugh. “Look what we’ve become.”

Rey grins. “Two worn-out kids on the same plaid blanket under the same night sky. What’s changed?”

Everything and nothing, all at once. As the smile fades from Rey’s lips, Ben remembers the distance that has taken root between them, the silences that have grown harder to fill. True, she’s still at slaving away at Plutt’s; he’s back in his childhood bedroom baring the brunt of his mother’s scrutiny; but the Ben and Rey that occupied their place three summers ago had glistened with hope. The shadows that sit here tonight resemble tired echoes of their former selves.

“You’re not worn-out,” he protests. “One day you’ll save up enough. You’ll find the school of your dreams and never look back.” Digging his toes deeper into the sand, hating the slump of his shoulders, he adds quietly, “I’ll never make it out of here.”

“Ben,” she says, turning from the sea to face him. “You were going to rattle the stars.” Reaching out, fingers limned by the moon, she traces his jaw and brings her palm to rest on his cheek.

In the end that’s what breaks him: all the tenderness welling from her fingertips. One gentle caress, and Ben Solo, failed professor and Coruscant reject, shatters. Sobs wrench apart his ribs, crawling from his throat. His whole body shakes—can’t stop shaking, even when Rey moves her hands from his face to his back, rubbing small circles of comfort into his shoulders. She doesn’t flinch when a yell escapes him, or another. The wind sweeps away his cries, scuds clouds across the sky, and blows Rey into Ben’s arms.

Muscle memory is a funny thing. It instructs Ben’s lungs to heave for air, and his toes to contract upon contact with the cooling sand. Three years apart from Rey, yet his arms recall how to curl around her, how to apply just enough pressure to draw out a sigh. His whole body hums with the contact. Her prickling electric signature, flavored pine and something distinctly Rey, seems to resonate at the sensation, too.

Kissing Rey is moonlight meeting water, fog diffusing stars, red and blue sparks in the snow. There’s a softness to her lips that wasn’t there before, gentleness where hardness demanded tribute to feed a hunger so lonely and deep. She still tastes of caf, metal, and sun on a winter’s day. Her touch caresses now instead of bruising.

Let the past die, Ben believes, bury it so deep it never resurfaces. Going back is impossible; moving on, inevitable. Yet he can’t stop himself from leaning into something new, built on foundations from the past too deep to drown.

Under a smattering of stars on a desolated beach in a city he loves and loathes in equal measures, Ben discovers what it really feels like to come home. Tomorrow she has an early morning shift at Plutt’s Repairs. Tomorrow he has a whirlwind of gossip to weather. But tonight, for one perfect quiet night, they have each other, and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the prompt! Hope this captured the softness you were looking for. Here's a lil playlist that inspired this fic:
> 
> Navy Blue, MUNA  
> Really Gone (Hansa Session), CHVRCHES  
> Rely, flor  
> Sad Dream, Sky Ferreira


End file.
